Chains, Graveyards, Demons, Pigs

Morning, church.

Reading from the Gospel of Mark.

They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Garrisones.

And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit.

He lived among the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces.

No one had the strength to subdue him.

Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones.

And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him, and crying out with a loud voice, he said, What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?

I adjure you by God, do not torment me.

For he was saying to him, Come out of the man, you unclean spirit.

And Jesus asked him, What is your name?

He replied, My name is Legion, for we are many.

And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country.

Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him, saying, Send us to the pigs, let us enter them.

So he gave them permission.

And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs, and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.

The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country.

And people came to see what it was that had happened.

And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind.

And they were afraid.

And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs.

And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region as he was getting into the boat.

The man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him.

And he did not permit him, but said to him, Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.

And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him.

And everyone marveled.

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

And uh, you know, you wouldn't know it after hearing a scripture like that, but I lay these texts out uh months in advance and just kind of start laying them out.

And so for demon pigs to fall on Halloween, um that's why we believe in a sovereign God.

That among other things.

Um I've got a couple of announcements and then we'll pray and we'll start moving through today's text.

Uh wasn't worship this morning wonderful, by the way.

Yeah, that's so uh November 7th, which is just a week from today, we have uh training for Redemption Kids volunteers.

So if you are a current volunteer in Redemption Kids, then this training is for you.

And if you'd like to be a volunteer in Redemption Kids, uh this is the place to start.

So it'll be right after the service from 11 a.m.

to noon.

And it'll go like this the first half hour, you'll be praying and discussing the vision for redemption kids, and that will be everyone, current and new volunteers.

And then from there, after that first half hour of praying and gathering together, uh uh getting vision for the children's ministry, then uh the current volunteers will be able to leave and the new volunteers will stick around and you'll go over the uh oh, what's it called?

Like the processes and stuff.

You know, curriculum.

Yeah, great.

Curriculum.

Um and uh policies and procedures.

That's what I was thinking of uh for how to take care of children in the children's ministry.

So uh we always need folks to volunteer there.

And it's one of the most helpful uh things you can do for our church and an investment that you can make in our children.

You know, we we are meeting separately right now, you know, the kids are over there, and but we all gather together to sing at the end because the children in our church are a part of our church.

Uh they are our church family, there's no distinction.

And so um, this is a wonderful place to give your time and serve to build them up in the Lord.

Uh now, uh looking forward, uh, two announcements that are related to each other.

On November 27th, everybody know what November 27th is?

That's right.

Small business Saturday.

Small business Saturday was invented by American Express.

Um, and we are going to be participating in it.

Uh our church is a part of the Tennyson Berkeley Business Association, and that's uh all of the nonprofits or businesses that are on this main drag of Tennyson, as well as other businesses in the Berkeley area.

And this, of course, is a big day for them.

Uh they really rally around it and Black Friday, right after Thanksgiving, and then this day, this is when they're really trying to make things happen.

And also the Sunday following is the first Sunday of Advent.

So we're going to combine these two things.

Um, you know how Christianity always gets blamed for like co-opting pagan holidays?

Well, you're watching it in real time.

Uh after uh Small Business Saturday, that evening, around uh 4 p.m., we're or ish, we'll get an exact time, we're going to have an Advent kickoff hymn sing together here in the church.

And so we want to invite the whole neighborhood.

And we're also going to have uh give like gift wrapping.

So you can come and wrap your gifts for free uh that you bought, and we'll have hot chocolate and you know, things, crafts and things for kids to do, and then we'll all gather together and we'll and we'll sing together.

Uh so that's announcement number one.

So mark your calendars.

Uh, if you're still in town after Thanksgiving on that weekend following, uh, this is a chance where we can really connect together with the community, uh, bring folks in from businesses and uh uh sing together and bring the community into this advent kickoff celebration.

Because, you know, it's one of those strange places in our culture where uh even non-Christians still love to sing Christmas songs.

So let's seize the moment.

Um now, in order for that to work, we need to make it look like a wonderful Christmas land here.

So this brings us to announcement number two.

The weekend before that, the Sunday of uh Sunday, November 21st, we're going to have uh like Christmas decorating bonanza for our building.

So right after church, uh you'll just stick around here and we'll decorate all the inside, and we're also gonna hang lights on the outside um and like uh wreaths and things on the like Narnia lamppost that we have in the front.

Uh so hopefully the building will look beautiful and be like a wonderful Christmas thing, and we can celebrate Advent together as a church and invite the neighborhood into that celebration.

Isn't that fun?

Yeah, right on.

This is it, this was Heidi's idea, by the way.

Heidi, yeah.

Yeah.

So uh I we think it'll be wonderful to celebrate like that.

All right.

Uh that's our announcements for today.

Uh sign up for kids.

That's the stinger.

So we won't remember that.

Let's pray and we'll get into today's text.

Holy Father, we thank you for the rhythms that you move our lives in of celebrations and holidays and feasts and the things that they bring to mind that we might uh remember that we are in in time here and we don't experience everything at once, but you give us seasons to focus on particular things.

Lord, I ask that today, in your providence, with such a strange text following on this strange holiday, Halloween, that you might give us wisdom and insight to be able to see how you interact with all the different shapes in the world, all these different traditions, and help help give us an understanding of how it is that you interact with even parts of the world that are that are full of horror or full of terror.

Lord, that's a real part of your creation and often a part of our lives.

Lord, we pray that you would give us your wisdom and insight by your word to see clearly how you bring redemption even there.

We'll lift that up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Okay, so yeah, it's Halloween.

Uh we I call the sermon the Garrison Demoniac because that's typically what this is referred to as, and it's helpful just learn those things if you're Googling or something later.

But um in my own notes, I named it chains, graveyards, demons, and pigs.

Because it felt more Halloween-y.

Halloween is about inversion.

Halloween's an inversion festival.

This is where you take what is strange or peripheral, what's normally cast out of the center of society and put on the edges and on the peripheral, and you bring it into the center for one day.

And that's what Halloween is.

And uh uh inversion festivals like this are common in all sorts of cultures.

Uh, for example, in scripture, the Jewish people, uh, does anybody know what their inversion festival is?

If anybody grew up like that celebrating the Jewish holiday that looks like Halloween, kind of?

Great, we're all gonna learn something new together.

Well, you guys are.

I know.

Yeah, Purim, exactly.

Who said that?

Matthew.

Classic.

Very on brand.

Uh yeah, it's per it's purim.

So uh purim is the festival at the end of the book of Esther.

So it's a in Esther is a book that's all about inversions.

So Haman is the bad guy in Esther, and he builds a gallows to hang Mordecai on.

And he intends to kill all the Jews, but then there's this, so you're living in this terrible land, you know, of horror and fear with this even object that's scary of a gallows.

And then there's this miraculous inversion, and more uh Haman ends up hanging on his own gallows, and all the uh Jews are set are uh freed and they end up attacking all of the people who would have attacked them.

And so they have this inversion festival, which is a which is Purim.

And and uh do you know what they do on Purim?

They um uh dress up in costumes uh and as like strange things.

They hand out candy to each other.

You know, does this sound familiar?

Uh and likewise the most fun thing, which I think we should do sometime, is they read through the book of Esther, and then every time Haman is mentioned, everybody in the crowd like boos and hisses and like rattles and makes things.

And it's an inversion, right?

Because it's like Esther's the evil guy, but it's like who are you afraid of now?

We're the scary crowd.

See, it's an it's an inversion type of festival.

And Halloween is that same type of thing.

Now, in a healthy culture, you have Halloween, and then what's tomorrow?

All Saints Day, right?

So you have an inversion where you bring all the strangeness to the center, and then you say, okay, now we're gonna put things back in their right place.

You see how that would be kind of like a healthy process for a culture to um have?

Well, our culture, we have Halloween, and then we just uh are hung over.

You know, there's no we don't we don't really put things back in the right place.

So there's there's the there's a purpose for these festivals, but they're you can see how they get out of balance.

You know, that there's uh in and they get out of balance because we don't know what to do with this horror or this terror.

And yet the story of Christ has a lot of horror and terror in it.

You think a gallows is scary, look at a cross.

It's much more viscerally horrific.

So today we're seeing what does Christ do with a horror-filled world?

And how does he enter a world that is totally inverted, where all that is wicked and strange is brought to the center?

And what happens when Christ enters that type of world?

So, this honestly, it could not have worked out better that this was on Halloween.

Um, because I think our our minds are just primed to be able to see our world more accurately.

And this text as well.

So let's begin by looking at how horror is real.

There's such a thing as true horror.

Mark 5, 1 through 2, that's where the story begins.

They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the garrisons.

And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit.

Do you remember last week the boat ride?

That was a nice three-hour tour.

So they're crossing this same lake, the, and uh there comes up this terrible storm.

Um, and Jesus is asleep in the stern, but then Jesus stands up and calms the storm.

So they finally get to the other side.

It's likely nighttime uh at this point, because when they left, it was evening.

So they finally arrive, and this is one of those out-of-the-frying pan, into the fire type of moments, because you'd think, oh, finally, we're off that crazy boat ride.

Now we can get onto land back where things are normal.

But they enter a place of total uncleanness.

They enter a place uh uh of terror when they step off the boat.

They're in a town called Garassa, uh, or at least in the region of Garassa.

And uh they uh in what greets them, when they stepped off the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs, a man with an unclean spirit.

So there's a total uncleanness if you're one of the disciples with Jesus of what you're being encountered with in Garassa.

First of all, you're in a Gentile area.

This is a Gentile city.

This you're no longer in uh ordinary Judea where things function the way that you expect them to.

And it was unclean for a Jew to associate with a Gentile.

So, strike one, strike two, there is they're entering on the edge of the city where the graveyards are.

And if you were to enter a place where the tombs were, then as a Jewish person, you'd have to go through a ceremonial ritual of cleansing yourself.

And so they're entering this geographic area of uncleanness.

It's like it's gentile, that's bad enough, and it's a place among the tombs, that's like the worst of the worst.

And who comes and runs up to them as the greeting party?

But a demon-possessed man who has an unclean spirit in him is now throwing himself at them.

This is absolute uncleanness.

They're entering a land of absolute terror.

And the question is, why did Jesus bring us here?

Remember, it was Jesus' idea to go to Garassa, to go to the other side of the lake, and then there's that terrible storm that they enter, and then when they finally get out of the storm, they're in Halloween town, this horrific place among the tombs with a demoniac uh confronting them.

Now, why would Jesus bring us here?

There's a category for what this is.

What's happening?

This is a border story.

One of my favorite authors is Cormac McCarthy.

Have any of you guys read him?

He's great if you like hyper-violent westerns.

And he has this great trilogy called the Border Trilogy.

And it's all about the uh Mexican-American border in the uh 1800s, early 1900s, and there's uh this this these interactions are very difficult, very complicated at the border.

And what they are entering here is a border story of that same type of shape, where the disciples have left all that they had known, all that they thought was ordinary, and they're entering a place where everything is turned upside down and everything is strange.

Now, we in our culture, where we relativize all of our bull all of our borders is what's typical for us.

And so we think, okay, I know these border stories.

Here's the lesson to be learned from this.

The lesson to be learned is that uh they are leaving and it just appears strange to them.

Because these are just sheltered little disciples, you know, uh Galilean fishermen are entering a place that just appears to be strange to them.

But this is not just an appearance of strangeness, this is not a problem of their perspective.

They are entering a place of real actual terror.

They're being confronted by real evil, real wickedness, real horror.

And that's the first thing for us to see here.

This is not just a this is not just a perception issue of the disciples, but there is such a thing as real horror and real terror.

Now, how can we know this?

Well, it's shown to us directly in the text because this isn't uh because what we're given next is a picture of the man who confronts him, who confronts them, the man who lives in this world of terror and upside downness.

We see what his existence in that space is like.

And his own existence is an existence of terror and horror.

In Mark 5, verse 4 through 5 says, For he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, he broke the shackles in pieces.

Mark 5:4–5

No one had the strength to subdue him.

Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones.

See, this isn't just a perception issue.

This is real horror.

This is to be in this space, among the tombs, in this uncleanness, cast out of society into the wilderness areas, the periphery of society, and even among himself, among himself, he can't be restrained from hurting himself.

He lives in a place of absolute terror, absolute horror.

Now, this is important for us to see that there is because this is one of those concepts uh that we have in Christianity, which is really important for us to have when we interpret the world, which is that there is such a thing as real terror.

We can't just relativize things away as different.

And we know this especially on Halloween.

Because imagine walking into a haunted house and thinking, no, this is just a different culture.

This is just the way they do things here.

Murder, you know, slashing people to death or whatever.

That's just like the way that they do things here, you know, it's just different.

Who am I to judge?

The people who made that haunted house would be like, what?

Like, no, the point, the point is for you to be terrified because this is something that we all agree is wrong.

Like that guy with the spooky face, that's just scary.

You know, it's not like we just don't understand it.

No, this is horrific.

See, it's important, and and it's one of those things where it like depends on where you are.

When you walk into the haunted house, you have a category of bad, evil, wicked, horrible.

But then when you're in anthropology class, you know, anthro 101, it's like, oh no, there's no such thing as bad or evil or wicked.

It's just different perspectives.

Everybody's the same.

Well, no.

Look at the way, look at the experience of that man in his environment.

In himself, it is a catastrophe.

So we need to have these real categories of bad, evil, wicked, terrible, horrible horror for those to make sense.

So they are confronted with a horror that is real.

Part of it, you know, I'm sure, is like these sheltered Galilean fishermen.

But the rest of it is real horror.

Now let's see how does the real horror respond to Jesus?

Mark 5, 6 through 7.

And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him.

And crying out with a loud voice, he said, What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?

I adjure you, by God, do not torment me.

Do you see the most terrifying thing?

Is most terrified of Jesus?

That the horror is horrified by the presence of Jesus.

So they come in and uh what does what does the man first do?

He falls down before Jesus.

He bows.

You know, the most horrifying thing.

Like imagine walking into a haunted house and it you walk in and you know, we I grew up in Florida, just outside of Orlando, and so every year we'd had have Halloween horror nights at Universal Studios.

You basically get theme park season passes there, like you get skiing season passes here.

And you Halloween horror nights is so scary.

I I had a couple of friends that we would go with every year.

I went one year uh in eighth grade, and I was like, I'm never doing that again.

It was so scary.

But there because you just walk around the theme park and there's just hidden like chainsaw guys that just pop out at you and scare you.

That's not fun.

But imagine walking around an environment like that, and you know, a guy like dressed as some Halloween horror character, you walk up to him and he's like, ah, of you, you know, dressed like a pedestrian.

That's what we're seeing here.

The disciples see this most horrific figure like terrified of Jesus.

And they just got off the boat where they're already scared of Jesus, and see after he calmed the storm, they're like, Who is this guy?

This is so strange.

In the inverted world, things are upside down.

The horror is afraid of the good.

And we see that in the spiritual realm, there's no mystery like there is in when Jesus is dealing with humans.

The the demonic understands precisely who he is, precisely what his power is.

And the the begging is don't torment me.

Don't express your your justice upon me, don't don't torment me.

It just seems like a Jesus just seems like a terror to them.

The world is upside down here.

So Jesus, as he's casting out this unclean spirit and calling the unclean spirit to come out of him, Jesus asked him in Mark 5, 9 through 10, What is your name?

He replied, My name is Legion, for we are many.

This is the uh the unclean spirit responding.

We are legion, for we are many.

And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country.

So much strange in the story.

What is your name?

The demon responds, we are my name is Legion, for we are many.

First of all, just at like a sort of psychological level, they are there is no unity in this man.

He is shattered in uh in who he is.

And the demon expresses this sort of shatteredness of his personality.

He is is broken in in all the ways that you can be broken psychologically.

Like there's and you can see it in his actions that he's turned against himself.

He can't be restrained even from hurting himself.

That's the type of shatteredness.

You know, we we grow in unity towards the Lord, and our spirit is united towards him.

Away from him, we are divided into a multiplicity, you know, a dissolving of our identity.

Secondly, legion is a militaristic term.

It's a Latin term for the largest group of Roman soldiers, which is uh 5,600 soldiers would be a legion of Roman soldiers.

And so there's a military aspect of this.

The man is an occupied territory.

And the readers of this, you think of the different audiences for Mark.

First of all, the disciples seeing that, they live in Judea, an occupied territory.

They know what it is to be taken over by a legion.

Likewise, the early Christians living in Rome under such severe persecution know the same thing.

And so there is a political aspect to this that would have been echoing in the minds of the first hearers, which is what happens when Jesus encounters a legion?

What happens when he encounters an occupation like that?

And then notice this strange thing where the demon begs him earnestly not to send them out of the country.

Let us stay in this environment.

We want to stay here where it seems like everything is conformed to our being upside down.

You know, we fit in in this type of a world amongst the tombs and the pigs and the uh people who deny and reject God.

This is where it works for us.

Don't send us out of here.

Now, uh the story continues in Mark 5, 11 through 12.

Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him, saying, Send us to the pigs, let us enter them.

Why, right?

This is so weird.

Uh why why it does the legion legion say send us to the pigs?

Um okay, I there's no like consensus in the commentaries because it's so strange.

Uh, but I'm gonna give it a shot.

A couple of things to understand.

Uh the spiritual desires to manifest in the physical.

So this is evident in the the simplest, the simplest ways.

You know, when when you, and I don't want to totally psychologize this because this is a real thing, you know, the spiritual is real, but it's easy for us, people like us, to grasp in psychological terms.

Okay.

So consider a spirit of procrastination.

It wants to manifest itself, this spirit of procrastination.

And so it takes a real form of scrolling.

You know, it it comes out into the world of you know, a video game or something, or of like reading some uh another useless article.

See, this this thing that's non-physical, that's just like a uh a non-entity, desires to manifest in the world.

So we experience that all the time.

Uh, this like tendency for ideas, mind, to uh uh become most real, most effective when it manifests in the world.

This is why it's so strange that uh that that uh people argue uh that mind comes from evolved physicality.

You know, like we all evolved and then developed consciousness.

When that's the exact opposite of the way that we experience the world always, we so frequently see mind uh manifest physically.

You know, that chair was came from someone's mind and then manifested in the world, and yet we don't think of mind as having created everything.

That's weird, isn't it?

We live in an inverted world where the most intuitive ways to describe existence are thought of as silly.

It's very strange.

So why go into the pigs?

Look, we've been physically taking over.

We want to continue doing that.

So, first of all, this impulse to physically manifest.

It's a way to understand the demons and it's a way to understand uh uh temptation and the way that those things work.

Why pigs?

Well, pigs were unclean animals, and they were so there's a sense in which by desiring to come into the pigs, it's like the demon is bartering with Jesus by saying, like, look, I want to manifest, and I want you to grant me permission to do that, so I'll offer the most humiliating thing I could manifest in.

And so the request is let us just go to the pigs, okay?

Like we know what we're like before you, most high God.

Could you just let us go to the pigs like what we really are?

Do you see the do you see the shamefulness in the interaction that's taking place here?

So there's a there's a desire to manifest and a and a humiliation and a shame and a sense of bartering will offer the least possible thing that we could manifest in, which to a Jewish person would be the pigs that are present.

They're unclean, not even good for eating, and uh illegal to be hurting.

So in Mark 5, 13, listen to this.

This is casting out a demon, right?

That's how we describe this.

But Jesus says, so he gave them permission.

Isn't that an odd way to cast out a demon?

So he gave them permission, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs and the herd, numbering about 2,000, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.

Welcome to Garasa.

Happy Halloween.

Now, if perhaps we can imagine there was some sort of um volition that the man still possessed that kept him from completing his suicidal tendencies.

The pigs had no such capability to resist the real results of what uh these demons desired, which was to bring death and destruction.

And so it immediately manifests the reality, the fruit, the what the what the legion results in and is headed towards.

It's death.

And we see the death as clearly as 2,000 pigs possessed by demons running into the ocean.

Which is pretty clear, I imagine.

Now, let's see how the whole world is upside down.

Mark 5, 14 through 15.

The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country, and people came to see what it was that had happened.

You know, you're standing there herding pigs.

All right.

I think we should go tell some folks about this.

Uh and they're out in the country, and and uh, you know, you're sitting there getting your hair cut, and he one of the herdsmen walks in and is like, okay, you know the demon-possessed guy?

Yeah, did he get out again?

Yeah, he got out again.

And I think the demons that were in him came out of him and went into all of our pigs, and they all died because of this guy that just came from Judea.

All right, I can finish the haircut later.

We'll go check it out.

You know, that I don't know that it would be very hard to stir up a crowd.

And they came to Jesus, so the the town gathers from out of the country, they go into the middle, you know, where nor normalcy is, and they come out to the periphery on the edge.

And people came to see what it was that had happened.

And they came, and what do they see?

Jesus, and they see the demon-possessed man, the one who had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid.

This is exactly the same as the disciples after Jesus calmed the storm.

Two back-to-back stories where the most fearful thing was calm.

Why would the most fearful thing be calm?

Because we're in the upside down.

We're in the inverted world.

What's the most what's the scariest thing walking through a haunted house?

You know, at Halloween horror nights, Universal Studios has just become a plug for this.

You can probably still get tickets.

Uh uh, there was a they would have a theme every year.

It would be like a scary clown or something, and that would be like the villain for the whole the whole experience.

And the the scariest haunted house would always have him in it.

And you know, when that villain walks through the haunted land, the haunted house, uh, and things jump out and scare him, he doesn't feel afraid.

You know, he feels completely normal.

He's he why?

Because he's in charge of this world.

You know, he thrives in this type of terror.

And that is what makes him the scariest thing.

You know?

Does that make sense?

The calm in the upside down is horrific because we know this is supposed to be terrible.

And they see the calm in the most possessed man sitting next to Jesus, and they see an authority that is unthinkable, a power that is unimaginable, and one that exposes the reality of where they have been living.

And that's what we see take place.

They, the townspeople, become exposed by the calm, and they are afraid of this power of Jesus.

In Mark 5, 15 to 17, it says, And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs.

And look at the response.

And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region.

You gotta get out of here.

What's Jesus doing?

You know, what have they seen?

He sat next to a well-dressed, calm man.

You gotta get out of here.

You can't come back.

You have to leave this region.

Do you see how Legion is the spirit of Garasa?

Because what because what does it show that they don't care about?

What do they what do they care about?

They care about the pigs, they care about the man about as much as Legion did.

And then what are they afraid of?

And what do they want to leave?

Jesus.

See how they the town acts in exactly the same way as Legion does.

Run up to Jesus, get out of here.

You're tormenting us.

But we saved the man.

We don't care about the man.

He was a write-off.

We kept him at the periphery.

It didn't matter what happened to the man.

That type of life doesn't matter.

They manifest the very attributes and tendencies of the Legion.

That's what's in the town.

Now we can partially get it.

2,000 pigs.

Come on, Jesus, why did you have to kill the pigs?

Why not just, you know, send the demons into wherever else they go?

I don't know.

What do you know about demons?

I don't know anything about demons.

And uh so but we can understand it's like those that would have been food, it's these herdsmen's livelihood.

Like, why why do that?

We're all we're all ready forgetting.

All Jesus did was grant permission.

It was Legion that killed the pigs.

See, we what Jesus did is he exposed the reality of what this frame of mind is headed towards.

And he might have accelerated it a bit, but this is where we were headed.

Towards death and destruction because of the pet evil that we wanted to just keep and keep in its right place.

So this is a picture of the way that we the way that Christ and Christianity is interpreted in all sorts of ways.

It's where the light comes in and exposes the reality of the darkness.

And then the light gets blamed.

But what did the light do?

It didn't even kill the pigs.

Get out of here.

We'd rather have the evil that we have, we'd rather have the evil that we know than have light come in and disrupt that and be a be a real power and a real authority here.

Let's put it in a in a practical way.

Christianity was born in a culture where its sexual ethic seemed so strange.

And Christianity exists now in a culture where its sexual ethic seems so strange.

I was listening to this book this past week called Gospel Bound, and they cited some uh studies about uh basically like how much sex people are having.

And they were describing like the hookup culture of our modern age.

And uh my expectation is oh wow, there's a there's a lot of hooking up going on.

And what the results of this study found is there isn't.

Here's what's happened.

We've said something like Christianity breaks in and says sex is this incredibly glorious and powerful thing.

And it's to take place in this very particular environment, which is a marriage between a man and a woman, of lifelong commitment to one another.

And our culture says that is the darkness.

Because that type of repression and that type of uh that type of um uh oppressive uh way of thinking about sex is going to produce all of these uh evils in our minds, and it's going to cause us to act in all these horrible ways towards one another because we aren't able to freely express ourselves in this important way.

So now we live in a world that values a libertine sex ethic.

And what have the results been?

More, freer, better sex?

No.

More alone time and pornography on a four-inch screen.

Death, right?

That's death.

But what gets blamed is the light that reveals the death.

Why is this so unsatisfying?

Why is this libertinism so unsatisfying?

Well, it's because of this, it's because of this oppressive puritanical vision of sex that we're our culture is still not able to throw off.

Do you see the pattern?

I wanted to find a tangible example where this is, we could see the pattern of what happens here.

The light comes in, reveals the nature of the darkness, that that just by any metric, the darkness leads to death.

But then the light gets blamed for the results of only what it revealed.

Do you see that pattern?

And that's exactly what's happening.

That's exactly what's happening here.

And you can see it at all types of levels of existence.

You know, we could have could have picked any number of them.

That's a world that's upside down.

Get out of here.

Get out of here.

You've shown us that this leads to death.

Therefore, we'll cause you, we'll call you the cause of our death.

The inversions continue.

18 to 19.

As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him.

And he did not permit him, but said to him, Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.

Okay, who is the man that you expect to desire to go with Jesus?

If we were to just lay these things out, it'd be like, Jesus, like you're gonna go to Garassa, there's gonna be a weird guy up front.

If you just break through that, you'll be able to make it into the city center where you can talk with some reasonable people.

No.

The man full of legion becomes the one who's saying, Jesus, I want to follow you.

Why?

Because he has experienced the death and the mercy of the Lord.

Because he he was under no illusion, like the rest of the town, that this little pet death we can just keep over there and be okay.

Because he was the over there.

And so he, freed, has this incredible desire to be with Jesus, to be discipled by Jesus and go with him.

And then every other person Jesus has healed so far, he said, okay, let's not make a big fuss about it.

But this guy, he says, No, you can't come with me.

Instead, go back into your own town.

And you need to tell them, listen to the words that Jesus says, how much the Lord has done.

First of all, listen, look at this.

This is I'm telling this to all of you now, church.

Go home to your friends who he doesn't even say, go to all of the cities in all of the Gentile cities around the Lake of Galilee.

I commission you.

No, go to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.

So the man goes back into the town, and then notice it's as he was getting into the boat.

How does Jesus respond?

How did Jesus respond to the demons?

Can we go into the pigs?

I grant you permission.

How does Jesus respond to the town?

Get out of here.

Okay.

What does the wrath of God look like?

I will give you what you want.

That is the wrath.

There's one more verse.

520.

And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him.

And everyone marveled.

What is the kingdom of heaven like?

What can it be compared to?

The kingdom of heaven is like a seed that a farmer plants in a field.

He sleeps and rises.

And the seed grows, first the stalk, and then the ear, and then the kernel in the ear.

The man knows not how.

Jesus leaves this town, but he plants a seed, a seed of the gospel in this man's life.

And so how does it move?

The man is not in the tombs in the mountains anymore.

He's in the decapolis, the ten cities.

He's in the city centers proclaiming what it is.

Notice, Jesus said, say how much the Lord has done for you.

And what does he proclaim?

How much Jesus had done for him.

What is he proclaiming?

Jesus is Lord.

Look at what the Lord has done for me.

And he marveled.

But we know so much more.

This man knew that Jesus would not be afraid of the terror that ruled his life, and instead would engage with it so that he would be able to be set free.

But we know much more of how Jesus would engage with the horror of our lives and ultimately the horror of even all of Garassa and all of the world.

Jesus enters that horror.

What is horrific?

You know, there's like we've all seen uh Passion of the Christ is a horror movie.

You know, it's a torture movie.

It's rated R.

It's R rated for Christians.

It's a movie about torture.

Christ enters into the horror of the world.

He takes it upon himself so that we might be set free.

How much more can we proclaim Christ as Lord?

He knew it personally, you know, he knew it just himself.

Yeah, the Lord, he came close to me when I was most horrific, when I was cast out and most set to the side.

You have parts in yourself that are horror.

Jesus drew close to those, took them upon himself that we might be saved.

Halloween's a wonderful opportunity.

Especially the horror parts.

Because this is one of the few occasions, one of the few days, maybe the only day a year, where our culture doesn't relativize evil.

Instead, we say, yeah, those bad, scary things are bad and scary.

Don't miss this.

And when we say, what do we do with it?

One option is it's all fake.

It's no such thing as horror and bad and scary, but that's not true.

What do we do with it?

Christ is the answer to our horror.

He took it upon himself that we might be set free.

This is the proclamation of Jesus is Lord.

That's why tomorrow can be All Saints Day after Halloween.

All right, let's see if there are any questions.

Do demons always need to manifest in something physical or living, or is there an alternative?

It doesn't seem to me, I don't know much about demons.

You know, I grew up in the same culture most of the rest of us did.

We're all materialists.

Like we'd become, we'd start to believe in the spiritual world like after we believe in Jesus, and then it takes like a whole working out of this materialism that we grew up in.

Uh so I I want to just say, like, oh no, it's just like there's there's uh the man was just had multiple personalities disorder.

Um and it's like, yes, there's there's there is that, and there are demons.

You know, the Bible's view is much more complex.

Um but in answer to your question, I don't think so.

Um consider the parable where it's actually not really a parable, it's just like a description.

What happens when um uh a place is uh a demon is cast out, uh and the the man you know is swept clean, uh, and then they go out into the waste places, uh, gather up seven more friends, and then come back uh and reinhabit this person.

Um it seems as though there is such a thing as waste places, but even calling them that shows that uh there's a there's a tendency, a desire to manifest uh in in some way or another.

Um why why do we not see so many like demon manifestations now, today, at least in our culture?

Well, think of like if you encountered a demon and you're like, that was a demon in the spiritual world is real.

Uh if that started happening across our culture, this place would be packed.

And that's not what Satan wants.

You know, he's not a fool.

Uh so uh, you know, we we should have different expectations for what to see, different ways that this manifests in our culture.

But a good way to see it is something with like our sexual ethic, where we call slavery freedom.

Um it's demonically informed.

Okay.

Let's uh uh pray and take communion.

In the very story of communion.

I think my iPad's possessed right now.

Listen to the things that we say.

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

His body is broken.

It's horrific what he brings into his story.

In the same way, also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Let us remember together at this communion, just like when we confessed this morning together, that the Lord, our Jesus, went down to the depths of the greatest horror, took it upon himself, and by doing so set us free into his glory.

He is our hero, our champion, our savior, because he entered the horror on our behalf, even the horror of our own hearts and our sin.

Let us come to him like the Garosene, proclaim him, celebrate him, and receive him today on Halloween.

Holy Father, we pray that you would attend this time, Lord, that we might see your glory and your rule over all aspects of our lives, and that we might learn to see you as Lord of all.